oppn parties News Content Generators Must Be Paid By Aggregators Like Google And Facebook

News Snippets

  • SP drops two candidates owing allegiance to Azam Khan from Rampur and Moradabad
  • In Assam, a controversy erupted after a picture of UPPL leader Benjamin Basumatary, lying on a stack of Rs 500 notes circulated on social media. UPPL is an ally of the BJP
  • AAP's Jalandhar-West MP Sushil Kumar Rinku joins the BJP. He was the only AAP Lok Sabha MP
  • Supreme Court dismisses Centre's plea to review its 2023 verdict in the PMLA case
  • Close save for passengers as they remain unhurt after the wings of two planes graze at Kolkata airport. Pilots derostered and inquiry ordered by DGCA
  • Bengal BJP leader Dilip Ghosh gets notice from the EC as well as the BJP for making ugly remarks about Mamata Banerjee's parentage
  • Sadanand Vasanth Date, who faught terrorists in the 26/11 attack and was awarded the Preisent's Police medal, has been appointed the head of the NIA
  • Centre will borrow Rs 7.5L cr in the first six months of FY25, nearly 50% of the target for the full year
  • 25 stocks, including SBI, will see same day trade settlements from today in the world's fastest settlement mode in both BSE and NSE
  • Stocks recover smartly on Wednesday: Sensex rises 526 points to 72996 and Nifty 118 points to 22123
  • Tennis: Rohan Bopanna-Matthew Ebden reached the semifinals of the Miami Open
  • IPL: records tumble as SRH beat MI in a high-scoring match. SRH score 277/3 with 18 sixes and Mumbai score 246 with 20 sixes to fall short by 31 runs. Atotal of 38 sixes, highest in an IPL match were hit and both teams combined to score 523 runs, the highest aggregate in an IPL match
  • Amul will launch fresh milk in the US
  • IPL: RCB beat Punjab by 4 wickets as Kohli and Karthik shine with the bat
  • India strongly objected to German foreign office remarks over the arrest of delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, called it "biased assumptions"
Delhi Lt Governor Vinai Kumar Saxena says government cannot be run from jail, hints at President's Rule in the capital ////// In a dangerous incident, the wings of two planes grazed while taxiing on the runway at Kolkata airport, all passengers were safe but DGCA ordered an inquiry and the pilots were derostered
oppn parties
News Content Generators Must Be Paid By Aggregators Like Google And Facebook

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2020-06-28 20:44:55

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

In a development that bodes well for news content generators all over the world, internet behemoth Google has decided to pay news content entities to carry "high quality" content in Australia, Brazil and Germany. The decision is not by choice or accident. Several countries, France and Australia being the pioneers, have either enacted laws to make it mandatory for aggregators like Google and Facebook to share advertising revenue with content generators or are thinking along those lines. Google knows, and Facebook and others will soon follow this lead, that it cannot digest the whole advertising pie without having to invest in news gathering or without having to pay entities that do so.

It takes just a few clicks to upload ready-made content on an aggregator site. But it takes massive investment, the toil of many reporters, the intelligence of many editors and the mind of many designers to make that content ready for publication. News content generators should receive a justifiable share of the revenue generated when aggregators get readers and advertising revenue by carrying this content. It will not suffice to claim that they are giving the content a wider reach through their captive and registered users. Since the Indian media is huge in size and content is generated in many languages and these aggregators carry it in almost all languages on their platforms, India should be included in the list of countries where aggregators will pay for content, and at the earliest.

And what is with this high-quality content thing? Aggregators have a screening policy in place through which they select publications and then select the content they carry. In that sense, it is already high quality. Hence, instead of trying to create confusion, aggregators must pay for all content that they carry on their platforms. Obviously, the terms will vary according to the engagement the content receives but there should be a base rate of payment and bonuses if it goes viral. Aggregators must realize that they cannot get everything for free. If they do not, then the government should follow other countries and make it mandatory for them to pay content generators by enacting a law and enforcing it strictly. News media is under tremendous pressure. While costs have escalated, revenue has dipped. The pandemic has worsened the situation. Internet companies that generate huge revenue by carrying content generated by media companies must share it with them.